Alex Gray - Glasgow Kiss

Solly watched as the boy stepped back a pace, as though to show a modicum of respect for the dead. Kyle’s back had straightened and he was clasping and unclasping his hands to keep them still, a possible sign of suppressed excitement. And those eyes; how they stared as the corpse was uncovered. Was that brightness to do with unshed tears? Or did it emanate from quite a different sort of passion?

As Kyle stepped forward, Rosie lifted a warning hand. ‘Don’t touch her, please. We can’t have any contamination.’ Then, as if she too had seen something in his expression and decided she didn’t like what she saw, the pathologist slid the body back into its slot in the wall. But, as she did so, a back draught caused another corpse to slide slowly out of its place in the wall.

‘Woooo!’ the supervisor said and they all laughed, the moment’s tension suddenly broken.

Solly heard the boy thank Rosie politely and now he saw just a young man who was trying to come to terms with a difficult situation, not the boy who had devoured the dead girl with his eyes, making the psychologist wonder.

‘What do you think, Kyle?’ he asked, making the boy start at the sound of his voice. ‘Is it Julie in there or is she somewhere else, out in a place full of spirits?’

A frown crossed the boy’s face as he considered the unexpected question. ‘I don’t know really. Does anyone? I can’t imagine Julie anywhere else, though. Not now I’ve seen her here.’

‘And how should we live our lives if we think there’s nothing after death? Hm?’

The boy turned towards him. Solly could see that he was half-embarrassed by the question but curious too.

‘Don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘Do our best I s’pose. Try to find out answers to the questions that keep us awake at night.’

The psychologist nodded, his dark beard dipping sagely, and he then he saw the boy give an inward sigh as though relieved that his answer had met with approval. So, had Kyle given a reply that he really believed or had he simply gauged what was an acceptable response? The answer to that, Solly told himself, might well hold the key to the real reason for this young man’s visit to Glasgow City Mortuary. And was the curiosity that had been aroused a sign of some flaw in his personality? As Kyle Kerrigan made his farewells, Solly Brightman realised that for him at least the last hour and a half had thrown up far more questions about the boy than answers.

‘Coming home?’ he asked and was rewarded by a grateful nod as Rosie sank against his shoulder, her hands clasped around his arm for support.

Solomon Brightman was staring out of the window, his eyes not seeing the spectacular view across Kelvingrove Park and beyond the towers of Glasgow University but somewhere further away to the west. Dawsholm Woods were easily accessed from both the Maryhill entrance and the gateway from Switchback Road that linked Anniesland and Milngavie. Eric Chalmers lived so close to this place that it was almost too easy to put him into the frame for the three murders. He’d lived in that area for years, first in the Manse down in the more affluent suburbs of Bearsden then in his own home at Queen’s Court right at Anniesland Cross. Solly sighed into his beard. There had to be a reason for everything, even the most aberrant behaviour. And what reason did a happily married man who enjoyed his life and his work have for killing three young women? Okay, there were the Peter Sutcliffes of this world who were also married and had committed terrible murders on a massive scale. But what he knew about Eric Chalmers didn’t seem to match the same profile as these types of killers.

Solly tried to put himself inside the wood, late on a summer’s night, hand-in-hand with a pretty girl.

Had the spade been there already, propped up against a tree? Or did the man holding the girl’s hand always keep a spade in the boot of his car, handy for the burial of another victim? It didn’t make sense to think of a schoolteacher carrying on like that. Some evidence of psychopathic behaviour would have made itself known in the man’s everyday world, surely? He’d even checked the date of Julie’s death to see if it had been a full moon that night. Other scientists might scoff but there was plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that there was a basis for believing that a full moon affected some people’s behaviour. But when he’d checked, the psychologist found the moon had been on the wane that night.

And there was the post-mortem evidence to take into account. Julie hadn’t been a virgin but the examination of her body had shown no signs of recent sexual activity. Just because no sexual assault had taken place didn’t mean the killer hadn’t wanted to perform such an act with her. Whoever he was, perhaps rape hadn’t been part of his intention, unlike so many killers of young girls. Had the killer been unable to have sex with Julie? Was that it?

Eric Chalmers was a married man who’d recently fathered a little girl of his own, not a man whose impotence might have enraged him into murder. But a younger, less experienced man might have wanted to perform a sexual act and been frustrated by his own inability. And there were plenty of young men who had been in Julie Donaldson’s orbit at Muirpark Secondary School, Kyle Kerrigan among them.

Solly thought back to the boy’s reaction when he’d seen Julie’s corpse. His thrill of excitement had been almost tangible, palpably embarrassing for the other people there. But sex and death were closely related, the psychologist had wanted to remind them. If the sight of Julie’s dead body had indeed caused sexual arousal in that boy, there was a certain amount of logical explanation for it. But he’d specifically asked to see her corpse, Solly reminded himself. Was the boy haunted by her ghost, perhaps? Had he something on his conscience? And was that his way of laying it to rest? Something was troubling the boy, of that he was sure, but the very idea that a lad of fifteen could have committed murders on young women over a period of three years was absurd. Wasn’t it?

Unless — and here Solly’s imagination took him deeper into the woods where not two but three figures walked slowly towards the place where one of them would be buried. Was it possible? Had there been another person there to help bury the victim, an older man, manipulative and beguiling? It wouldn’t be the first time that young folk had been lured to their death by a pair of evil schemers, Solly thought. Who could ever forget the deeds of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley? It was a possibility he couldn’t rule out, not until there was evidence to the contrary.

There was something about this scenario that he didn’t like. This killer was far more likely to have been on his own, possibly stalking each of these young women, maybe even selecting them for something they had in common, some quality that he found attractive. Was that what he was missing? A trigger of some sort?

Profiling meant careful consideration of what you knew of the perpetrator and the victims as well as the entire plethora of information that an investigation threw up. But it also meant being aware of possibilities. This killer was a dangerous person: unstable in some way but calculating and clever. And Solly was beginning to think that this killer had never been within the orbit of Lorimer’s investigation. For, the more he considered each of the people who had known Julie Donaldson, the more inclined the psychologist was to dismiss every last one of them as her killer.

‘That’s not very helpful,’ Lorimer said at last.

They were sitting in his room, the afternoon sunlight slanting through the vertical blinds, Solly slightly turned away from the window, seated by the DCI’s desk where Lorimer was perched, a cup of coffee in one hand.